Mark Nepo's Blog, page 27

Staying Awake: An Ordinary Art, a three-day/two-night retreat with MARK NEPO

This event is hosted by Hollyhock. You can register early by calling 1.800.933.6339. Additional online registration details are coming soon.

Those who wake are the students.

Those who stay awake are the teachers.

Staying awake is an applied art of spirit. It is not something we can manipulate, but only live into. Each of us is born instinctively awake and yet it takes courage to stay awake, to remember that all we encounter is real. As such, staying awake is a timeless practice we must, ultimately, inhabit alone, but one which we can enliven together. The journey back to wakefulness is an invitation each day to delve into what it means to be alive. We all have the chance to wake and love, to welcome the gift of surprise and befriend the Whole. To do this, we must wake, more than once, in order to learn the ordinary art of living at the pace of what is real. Regardless of what we do or where we live, the journey is the same: How to open our pain and listen to all that matters, so we can make it through and rejoice from day to day. Poet, teacher, and cancer survivor Mark Nepo offers a fresh perspective on the art of being alive, providing essential insight into how we can minimize what stands between us and our experience of life.

As Far As the Heart Can See—available in audio

You can now buy the audio for As Far As the Heart Can See instead of or in addition to the print book!

On Amazon Amazon or Barnes and Noble

An excerpt will be available here on Monday!

Video: Developing the presence to respond to your circumstances

As we develop the bandwidth and interconnectivity of our Whole IQ, we find greater presence in meeting our life circumstances from a place of deeper self-care, honesty, and integrity. Michele talks about how our presence is contingent on living in an energy that is honest and best serves ourselves and our world each day.

READING AND RECEPTION: As Far As the Heart Can See: Staying Close to What is Sacred

Join Mark Nepo on September 29th at PRIMITIVE GALLERY for a reading and reception to celebrate the publication of his new book, As Far As the Heart Can See.

This is a no-cost event.

For Instance

I started writing because life took my breath away. It was how when stunned by beauty I tried to stay stunned. How when touched I tried to keep the touch alive. The miracle of sun on water, for instance, when dwelled upon, begins to say, you see, this is what love can do to pain. The old woman sifting tea through a large wood-framed screen, who learned this from her mother; she sifting tea in the light morning wind without a word; her very presence begins to say, you see, this is how the heart broken into compassion sifts what is true, so it can be steamed into something warm that heals… I still long to be stunned. I still long to be touched. And as my eyes grow slow to focus and my hearing falls into a wash, I am losing the distinction between people and nature, between cityscapes and landscapes, between silence and music. And wonderfully, in a startling return to miracle, they are all at heart one, as they have always been. The other day George and I cut up on old cherry tree and sawed one of the logs in half. It was filled with ants who had been feasting on the knot. They scurried into the grass. Funny how we like to burrow into the knots. After surrendering its knots, the log was empty. It was then we noticed a line of inner grain that looked just like a feather; as if some ancient bird had been turned into wood long before we were born. This is our plight on earth: to be stunned, to be touched, to eat our way through the knots till we are light as a feather.

As Far As the Heart Can See: Staying Close to What is Sacred, a one-day workshop guided by Mark Nepo

"Nepo is a consummate storyteller with a rare gift for making the invisible visible." —Publishers Weekly

This one-day workshop is offered as a way to celebrate the publication of Mark Nepo's new book of teaching stories, As Far As the Heart Can See: Stories to Illuminate the Soul. Stories carry the seeds of our humanity. They help us, teach us, heal us, and connect us to what matters. Beloved as a teacher, poet, and storyteller, Mark Nepo, the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Awakening, is a gentle guide on our journey to discover our personal truths. This workshop is an invitation to engage with profound and life-giving material that will deepen the way you perceive and relate to the world.

Bring a journal and a brown-bag lunch

***

"Since everything is sacred, staying close to what is sacred is a matter of presence and attention more than travel to some secret place. In essence, staying close is a pilgrimage to the heart of where we are. Since it is we who lose our directness of living, our task is often to restore that freshness of being alive. How do we stray on and off the path of what matters? How do we befriend the life of obstacles? How do we find a home between suffering and loving the world? How do we help each other respond to the invitation to grow? In this workshop, we will enter these questions and work with stories and parables as a way to evoke the wisdom of our own stories."

—Mark Nepo

This Precious Human Birth: The Practice of Being Human, a weekend retreat guided by MARK NEPO

Reading and Conversation

December 2, 2011, 7:00-9:30PM

One-Day Retreat

December 3, 2011, 9:00-5:00PM

Attend One or Both!

Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids, MI

"Nepo is a consummate storyteller with a rare gift for making the invisible visible."

—Publishers Weekly

This weekend is offered as a way to affirm how rare it is to be alive at all and to explore the journey of being a spirit in the world. Beloved as a teacher, poet, and storyteller, Mark Nepo is a gentle guide on our journey to discover our personal truths. Using ancient and contemporary stories, poetry, journaling and dialogue, Mark will explore the ways of being and doing that can help us navigate the difficult thresholds that life presents. Participants will be invited to befriend their own stories and listen for their own wisdom in this reflective and transformational gathering. This retreat is an invitation to engage with profound and life-giving material that will deepen the way you perceive and relate to the world.

Bring a Journal

"Since everything is sacred, staying close to what is sacred is a matter of presence and attention more than travel to some secret place. In essence, we are each asked to make a pilgrimage to the heart of where we are. Since it is we who lose our directness of living, our task is often to restore that freshness of being alive. How do we stray on and off the path of what matters? How do we befriend the life of obstacles? How do we find a home between suffering and loving the world? How do we help each other respond to the invitation to grow? In this workshop, we will enter these questions and work with stories and parables as a way to evoke the wisdom waiting in our lives."

—Mark Nepo

This Precious Human Birth: The Practice of Being Human, A Weekend Retreat Guided by Mark Nepo

Reading and Conversation

December 2, 2011, 7:00-9:30PM

One-Day Retreat

December 3, 2011, 9:00-5:00PM

Attend One or Both!

Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids, MI

"Nepo is a consummate storyteller with a rare gift for making the invisible visible."

—Publishers Weekly

This weekend is offered as a way to affirm how rare it is to be alive at all and to explore the journey of being a spirit in the world. Beloved as a teacher, poet, and storyteller, Mark Nepo is a gentle guide on our journey to discover our personal truths. Using ancient and contemporary stories, poetry, journaling and dialogue, Mark will explore the ways of being and doing that can help us navigate the difficult thresholds that life presents. Participants will be invited to befriend their own stories and listen for their own wisdom in this reflective and transformational gathering. This retreat is an invitation to engage with profound and life-giving material that will deepen the way you perceive and relate to the world.

Bring a Journal

"Since everything is sacred, staying close to what is sacred is a matter of presence and attention more than travel to some secret place. In essence, we are each asked to make a pilgrimage to the heart of where we are. Since it is we who lose our directness of living, our task is often to restore that freshness of being alive. How do we stray on and off the path of what matters? How do we befriend the life of obstacles? How do we find a home between suffering and loving the world? How do we help each other respond to the invitation to grow? In this workshop, we will enter these questions and work with stories and parables as a way to evoke the wisdom waiting in our lives."

—Mark Nepo

The Game

As fans flit about and land,

it's the empty field that awes me.

Going through the tunnel, the history

of every game ever played hovers like the

memory of lightning in a canyon, a force

no one can make appear or keep from

fading. And the great ones know that

they only borrow a much-needed grace,

if they're lucky. All the work, all the

running and swinging, all the seasons

of dirt and leather, so that one inning

in May or September, when they leap

for a liner, the legends might lift their

glove higher, when they swing for the

fences, the wind of sluggers long gone

might rush their arms through the zone

to help them catch up to that devastating

heater. But now, with pitchers stretching

and veterans getting taped, the ground crew

is liming the batter's box, spraying the infield,

and sweeping the mound. Clean bases are

being spiked at the corners and the lines

are drawn which ordinary humans will

cross for a few hours with the possibility

of being immortal, which will evaporate as

soon as they reach home or step off the field.

The great ones know it's not they who

are great, but the lift of the field.

Mark Nepo is a contributor to The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy

Read the press release here.

The Oprah Winfrey Show: Reflections on an American Legacy

The full list of contributors includes:

•Maya Angelou, who writes the foreword

•Bono and Nicholas Kristof writing on giving and social action

•Ellen DeGeneres, Stanley Crouch, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writing on equality

•Julia Roberts and Diane von Furstenberg writing on culture and style

•Toni Morrison and Elie Wiesel writing on books

•Maria Shriver and Gloria Steinem writing on women's issues

•Dr. Phil McGraw, Mark Nepo, and Marianne Williamson writing on spirit and personal growth

•Bob Greene and Dr. Mehmet Oz writing on health and wellness

•John Travolta and Phil Donahue contributing tributes to Ms. Winfrey